The Education Imbroglio

                                                    

                                                                 THE EDUCATION IMBROGLIO

What do the Indian youth of today feel about the educational scenario? A country with almost as many students as the population of most countries, India has always been an intellectual powerhouse. Most of the world’s best and most brilliant brains come from India. But why does the disparity still prevail among society. Why aren’t we able to develop fully? The answers do not lie outside, but within.

Most students in the burgeoning Indian middle class are brought up with a very narrow minded approach to careers. It’s either medicine or engineering. Anything else is just not acceptable. Why? Mostly because the parents feel that saying that their son is a doctor or an engineer is far better than anything else. This puts the student under tremendous amount of pressure and he has no say in this matter. The world is teeming with opportunities. But the kid is just not allowed to look at them.

Apart from this is the whole situation here in our country, where the system thrives on learning by rote and gives absolutely no importance to the learning that goes with it. And of course, burdening the student with so much coursework that the creativity of the young mind never has time to flourish. The whole expression of youth is gone, lost to useless tussles at drawing a biology record book or writing 45 pages of a book report he never liked anyway. How many artists, poets and film makers would we have lost in this way? The top ranker is a guy who knows nothing about the concepts of electromagnetic theory but would know which page and paragraph in the book it falls on.

The best minds go out of the country. Then who teaches our children, you ask? Those who do, choose teaching as a last resort. The quality of teachers has gone down because; there isn’t any money in it. This is atrocious, part of a vicious circle that leads our country further and further down the drain.

Of course, not everything is lost. The system still produces the most brilliant scientists, researchers and software professionals in the world. The point to be carried forward here is the leaps we would make on the world stage with just a little bit of effort and common sense. There’s so much to do in this world. Let me do it. 

This is what the young people of India say:

I am like this only.

Sairam Krishnan